GenZ Goes Consulting: A Match Made in Hell?
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
On one side: a generation that demands work-life balance, flexible hours, remote work, meaningful projects, and mental well-being. On the other side: an industry notorious for 12-hour days, all-nighters, and clients who expect results for $150,000 a week.
Can GenZ function in modern-day consulting? Or is it a match made in
hell?
We spent 6+ years each at McKinsey, working alongside GenZ consultants in their first jobs. We've seen the clash of expectations up close — and the reality is more nuanced than either the GenZ critics or the old-school partners would have you believe.
What GenZ Expects
GenZ — people born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s — is the generation just now entering the workforce in large numbers. If you follow the news or browse online, the narrative is pretty consistent: GenZ wants great work-life balance, flexible working hours, remote work, meaningful projects that make a difference, and physical and mental well-being.
Meeting these expectations is a great aspiration that we should all strive towards. The question is: how does that fit into a high-pressure environment like consulting?
The Working Model: This Has Actually Changed
Consulting firms have adjusted their working model a lot in recent years to better suit GenZ — though to be honest, many of the changes were driven more by external shocks than by generational demands. The biggest driver was COVID.
During the pandemic, 100% remote work became the norm for consulting teams. And while the pandemic is over, firms have kept some of those changes. Gone are the days when you had to be at the client site at 9 AM Monday morning and leave with the last flight on Thursday evening. The working models nowadays range from fully remote with selective in-person meetings (say, biweekly) to co-location with colleagues in a consulting firm office of their choice — maybe one week in the New York office, one week from home, and a few days at the client site in between.
That said, the old model still persists if the client prefers consultants on-site. The client has the last word. But overall, geographic flexibility and ways of working have genuinely evolved.
Work-Life Balance: Here's Where Cultures Clash
Now let's talk about working hours — and this is where it gets interesting.
Working hours in consulting largely depend on the industry, the client, and the topic of the project. But hours have definitely not decreased in recent years. If anything, the remote COVID model even increased hours in some cases. Previously, you had a natural cut-off point when you headed to the airport on Thursday evening. When working from home, you just keep going until late at night, even on Thursdays.
The fundamental reality is this: work-life balance in consulting is driven by client expectations. If a company pays $150,000 per week for a consulting team, they want to see results — especially when hiring a top firm for a key strategic project. No consulting firm can tell the client, "Well, most of our analysts are GenZ — let's reduce the project scope a bit to enable a better work-life balance." No client would ever accept that. If a firm proposed it, they wouldn't just lose the project — they'd be laughed out of the meeting.
Decision-makers at corporates usually work long hours themselves. And that's what they expect from their advisors.
So working hours haven't changed, and they won't change much in the future. What has changed is the expectations of fresh GenZ consultants.
In the old days, working hardcore was something you were proud of. Doing an all-nighter was worn almost like a badge of honor. GenY — which we're part of — didn't glorify hard work, but we also didn't make a fuss about it. We simply did it. Efforts were made to improve work-life balance, but always with the understanding that this is a tough job and it'll remain so.
GenZ is the first generation that's really vocal about work-life balance. They explicitly and unapologetically demand it. And this is where cultures clash.
Project managers and especially old-school partners are struggling with this attitude. Most would say GenZ isn't wrong, but they do need a reality check. This isn't a job at the ice cream parlor, or at a government office. You're sparring literally with the chief executive. That person probably puts in 100 hours a week, so you better keep up. If you want to be a professional athlete but only want to train one hour a day while skipping your diet, you won't be in the league for very long — and there's no one who'll feel sorry for you.
Meaningful Work: Real Progress, But Let's Be Honest
This is one area where consulting firms have actually made a lot of progress.
Many firms are doing substantial pro-bono work for charities and are prioritizing sustainability, investing heavily in building competencies in that space. We've seen projects to increase vaccination rates in Africa and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for companies across all industries. At the same time, a lot of objectionable work has been discontinued. After McKinsey's involvement in the opioid epidemic came to light, the firm no longer advises anyone in that space. The same goes for tobacco. There are now much higher guardrails and compliance procedures, and certain industries or clients are simply not served at all anymore.
On top of classic project work, most consulting firms offer a certain number of days per year for consultants to work on pro-bono engagements or pursue charitable activities. And we've seen a lot of people — GenZ and otherwise — take advantage of that.
But let's be honest about the limits. A lot of the work in consulting is still not exactly "meaningful" by GenZ standards. Projects on operational efficiency, corporate transformations, and growth strategies remain at the center of client agendas. That's the bread and butter of every consulting firm. Just because sustainability is all the rage doesn't mean clients ignore their operations or growth initiatives.
The simple and unfortunate reality: clients typically won't push for something like sustainability unless they also expect a financial benefit from it, or unless they're forced by regulation.
So meaningful work is becoming more important — but it's still more likely that you'll be helping a bank cut costs than ending world hunger. The work of consulting firms is driven by client needs, not by GenZ demands.
Mental and Physical Well-Being: The Intention Is There, But...
This is an area consulting firms are strongly focusing on — though you can argue how well they're actually addressing it.
There are weekly well-being sessions. Firms often cover well-being expenses — sports classes, extra screens to help with posture, and the like. You'll have access to people to talk to, or free coaching sessions to help you professionally and personally.
But given that the work still involves a high-pressure environment with long hours, you usually don't have time to worry about your well-being during the week — as harsh as that sounds.
Our personal experience is that GenZ isn't any less resilient than previous generations. They're more vocal about their complaints, but it's not like we're seeing burnouts left and right. More important than generational differences are external circumstances. The biggest issue we saw was the COVID cohort: people who transitioned directly from school into a high-intensity job during the pandemic. Many young consultants were living in small apartments, alternating between their bed and their desk, with minimal guidance and almost no team spirit. That was genuinely tough — but it was a COVID problem, not a GenZ problem.
So Did Consulting Adjust to GenZ?
In conclusion: not really. The consulting industry is driven by client demand. And as long as client executives are not GenZ themselves, there won't be a fundamental change in how consulting operates.
It's much more accurate to say that fresh GenZ consultants, much like every previous generation, need to adjust to the working world. Maybe it's social media driving unrealistic expectations, but GenZ consultants typically find themselves in a pretty rapid maturing process once they join.
We're not looking at a GenZ revolution. But we are looking at an evolution. Working models have become more flexible. Meaningful and sustainability-oriented projects are growing. The push for personal well-being is stronger than ever. And if GenZ manages to reconcile those demands with the reality of top-management strategy consulting, then hats off to them.
The Bottom Line
If you're GenZ and considering a consulting career, here's the honest version: the hours will be long, the pace will be intense, and the clients won't care about your work-life balance expectations. But the working model is more flexible than it was five years ago, the meaningful work is more available than it's ever been, and the firms are genuinely investing in well-being even if the execution isn't perfect.
The question isn't whether consulting has adjusted to GenZ. It hasn't, not fundamentally. The question is whether you're willing to embrace the intensity for a few years in exchange for an extraordinary learning curve, exceptional colleagues, and career opportunities that will serve you for decades. If the answer is yes, then it's a match — not made in hell, but forged under pressure. And those tend to hold.
If you've decided consulting is right for you, the next step is getting the offer. Our Case Interview Mastery course on Udemy walks you through 7 full McKinsey-style cases with detailed solutions. And our CV Masterclass covers everything you need to build a CV that gets past MBB screening. Both taught by us — two former McKinsey interviewers.
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